Yushchenko accuses state militia of secretly tracking his movements (08/15/04)

Yushchenko accuses state militia of secretly tracking his movements

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko on August 10 accused the state militia of secretly tracking him. The charge came after members of his campaign team caught individuals with sophisticated camera equipment photographing Mr. Yushchenko as he ascended Ay Petri, the highest peak in the Crimean Mountains.

Mr. Yushchenko, a mountain climbing enthusiast, was on the mountain in conjunction with the ecological program "Clean Up Ukraine" that is part of his presidential campaign message. Earlier this year, the presidential candidate had climbed the country's highest peak, Hoverlia, located in the Carpathian Mountains, to promote the ecological program.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs did not deny that state militia officers had been following the Yushchenko entourage. It claimed during a press conference in Symferopol that the officers had been acting as a security detail for the presidential candidate. However Mr. Yushchenko said he had not approved any such security detail.

"In the United States, too, police film presidents and candidates as part of security operations. Recall the film footage of the assassination of President [John] Kennedy. That was part of a police security operation, but it was a failure in that instance," explained the spokesman for the Crimean division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs during an ICTV news program.

Meanwhile Serhii Kivalov, head of the Central Election Committee, said on August 11 that he had yet to receive a complaint from the campaign team of Mr. Yushchenko on the matter. He noted that he had sent a list of the registered presidential candidates to the Ministry of Internal Affairs recently asking that security be provided for all candidates, with their consent.

Mr. Yushchenko said his people had apprehended three men who had been shadowing him for some time and discovered in their possession a directional microphone, radios, video cameras and a videocassette showing the presidential candidate during a visit with his family in the Crimean city of Sevastopol. The car in which the three men had driven contained 12 Ukrainian license plates with various numbers.

The men failed to adequately explain what they were doing, according to Iryna Heraschenko, press spokeswoman for Mr. Yushchenko. She said identification that two of the men finally produced showed them to be state militia officers. Mr. Yushchenko said that one of the men simulated a fainting spell in order not to have to show his identification card.

"Such people discredit not only their profession but also the law and the country as a whole," stated Mr. Yushchenko according to the ICTV report.

Mr. Yushchenko, a national deputy and leader of the Our Ukraine parliamentary faction, which is the primary opposition to the administration of the outgoing president, said he had known he was under observation for sometime, but lately it had become obnoxiously obvious and he had tired of it. The presidential front-runner said he would turn to the country's State Security Service to review and monitor the situation further.

Less than a week earlier the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, a watchdog organization, issued a statement in which it noted that administrative resources - government finances, personnel and authority - were already being tapped illegally in Ukraine's presidential election campaigns.

It reported on August 3 that "reliable evidence suggests that governmental officials in several sectors are illegally abusing public institutions to manipulate the outcome of the October 31 presidential election," reported Interfax-Ukraine.

The international organization pointed out that another problem was that TV coverage of the candidates gave priority to Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, Mr. Yushchenko's main competitor. It said that most coverage of Mr. Yushchenko was of a negative nature.

In another report, the Razumkov Center for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies said that 4 percent of Ukrainians were being forced to actively support the candidacy of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. A BBC report explained that the Razumkov Center had asked Ukrainian citizens whether they had been forced to take part in "rallies, forums and conferences in support of presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych."

Some 27 percent of the residents of the Kharkiv Oblast, said they had been forced to do so, while about 8 percent of the residents of the Donetsk Oblast also answered in the affirmative. The survey was taken on July 22-28 among 2,014 adults who lived in 122 cities and towns across Ukraine. The margin of error was 2.3 percent.

Meanwhile, Serhii Tyhypko, the chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine who is on a leave of absence and acting as campaign chairman for Prime Minister Yanukovych, told ICTV on August 10 that the leaders of the Yushchenko campaign were preparing Ukrainian citizens for a social upheaval - a Georgian scenario - as he called it. He explained that by crying foul at every turn in the campaign season, Mr. Yushchenko's people were preparing to accuse the Yanukovych team of fixing the elections with the goal of inciting the Ukrainian citizenry to social unrest and upheaval.

The announcement came as 39 members of the Donetsk organization of the Social Democratic Party United, which is headed by Viktor Medvedchuk, the chief of staff for President Kuchma, announced that they could not support the presidential candidacy of Prime Minster Yanukovych. The group, from the village of Gvardievsk, said the prime minister's present policies did not give any grounds for optimism that he would be able to develop an effective social policy as president. Mr. Yanukovych was chairman of the Donetsk Oblast Administration before becoming prime minister in November 2002.

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